


Milk and Cookies (and Kidnappers and Ice Cream)

by Anonymous



Category: Not If I Save You First - Ally Carter
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-13
Updated: 2021-03-13
Packaged: 2021-03-17 13:01:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,974
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29100705
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: After the attack on the White House, things were starting to go back to normal. Well, normal except for how Maddie's dad couldn't walk very far without getting tired, and the first lady still looked scared sometimes, and Logan wasn't going to be going back to school anytime soon.But the kidnappers were dead, the threat was over, and they all ought to be safe as houses now.Especially in Maddie's actual house, right?
Comments: 1
Kudos: 2
Collections: Five Figure Fanwork Exchange 2020





	Milk and Cookies (and Kidnappers and Ice Cream)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Nerissa](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nerissa/gifts).



> With many thanks to Morbane for betaing!

As Michael limped his way into the Oval Office, the president of the United States stood up from his desk and held out a hand. "Glad to see you, Manchester," he said. "It's been too long."

"Good to see you too, Mr. President. Good to see just about anything besides hospital walls, frankly." Michael's right arm was still in a sling, so he awkwardly clasped the president's right hand with his left in the most unsatisfying handshake he had ever given.

But the president didn't seem bothered by his fumbling. "My wife will give me hell if I leave you on that leg too long," he said. "And so will a number of other people, but my wife's the one I'd be the most foolish to ignore. Here, have a seat."

He dragged a chair over next to his desk, ignoring Michael's ineffectual objections of "I can get it" and "Really, Mr. President, I'm not an invalid." But Michael had to admit, as he settled himself into the chair, that he wouldn't have been able to stay on his feet much longer. He was on enough painkillers to keep his leg and shoulder at a dull ache most of the time; but right now his leg felt like it was on fire again, as it had on that first day (once the adrenaline had worn off).

"I want to thank you again," the president began.

Michael felt his cheeks heat up. "You know it's my job," he said. "I was glad to do it."

"Not as glad as I am," the president said. "You saved my wife and quite possibly my son as well, and I'm sure you know that there is nothing in the world more important to me than they are. I owe you a thousand thanks, and instead it would seem that the only reward I've given you so far is to put you into more danger." He picked up a folder.

"Mr. President, I—" Michael took the folder as the president shoved it into his hands.

"They've found out who my attackers were," the president continued. "You've heard of the Wolf?"

Michael tipped his head back and sighed. "I was hoping he wouldn't be involved."

"As best as we can determine, he wasn't—not exactly. But his son was. His son, in fact, was one of the three men you shot."

"Damn," Michael said fervently, paging through the file. "There's no way the Wolf will let that pass unrevenged."

"We'll have to arrange for security for you and Maddie," the president said. "The Wolf is very good at what he does. If his people could gain access to the White House, then they can gain access nearly anywhere."He rummaged absently through some of the papers on his desk, pulling them together into a stack without taking his eyes off of Michael. "Though if they try to get in here a second time they'll have a much harder time of it, I imagine; your boss has been making all sorts of improvements. You might have noticed the additions to the staff. But I'm afraid that while I want to help you as much as I can, I'm not going to go so far as to let you and your daughter move into my house."

He forced a laugh, and Michael did his best to laugh too, even though they both knew the joke was barely funny. "Don't worry, Mr. President, I wasn't considering anything of the sort," Michael said. "Like you said, they've already been here once. I was thinking of going in the other direction. Security through obscurity. Somewhere in the middle of nowhere."

"Forever?"

"Well, until you take the Wolf down. I assume you'll continue to have people working on that, since his son went after your family and all."

"It might take a while," the president said.

"I'll have time," Michael said. He gestured with his good arm at his bad leg. "I'm already likely to have lots of time on my hands, thanks to what happened. Might as well spend it one place as another."

"I'm really sorry about this, Manchester," the president said. "It's no way to repay what you did for me."

"Just find the Wolf," Michael told him firmly. "For your family's safety, and for mine." And—far more important than Michael's own safety, and practically equal with that of the people he was sworn to protect—for Maddie's. They'd kept any mentions of her out of the news about the White House attack, but that wouldn't be enough to keep her safe from the Wolf. It wouldn't matter to him whether Maddie had had anything to do with the incident, as long as her father had. Michael didn't regret what he'd done one bit, but he wished terribly that someone else—anyone who disliked collateral damage and didn't care about revenge—had been responsible.

There was a tap on the door and the chief usher poked his head in. "Mr. President, Ms. Harland is here for your 3:30 appointment."

"Ah yes, show her in," the president said. "Good luck, Manchester. Keep in touch, and let us know what you need. I'll make sure you get it."

"Thank you, sir," Michael said. "I will." Bracing himself against the Resolute desk with his good arm, he pushed himself to his feet.

"Do you need assistance, Mr. Manchester?" the chief usher asked as Michael passed him.

"No thank you, I'm feeling stronger all the time," Michael said, pasting a smile onto his face.

The chief usher kept pace beside him anyway as they walked outside, which might have simply been because he also needed to leave the West Wing to return to his office—though Michael rather thought the man was capable of walking faster than that.

"Mr. Manchester!" Before they got more than halfway down the West Colonnade, the first lady approached from across the lawn of the Rose Garden, her son at her side. Michael stopped and waited for her to catch up, while the chief usher continued on to the residence (at a slightly faster pace, Michael noted).

"Ma'am," Michael said with a nod. "Hey Rascal. Glad to see you up and about."

"Same to you, sir," Logan said.

His mother nodded agreement. "We wanted to thank you personally," she said. "If you hadn't been there in time—I hate to think what would have happened."

"I'd rather not think about it either," Michael said. "I'm just glad that I was."

"How's Maddie?" Logan asked.

Michael smiled his first real smile of the day, and suppressed the urge to ruffle the kid's hair. "She's doing okay," he said. "I think she misses you, 'cause she keeps asking when you'll be healed enough to come back to school. Somehow I don't think she cares that much about your academics."

"The doctors said I can go back any time," Logan said. "But Mom says she wants to wait until they've had more time to put the new security protocols in place."

"I'm feeling a bit overprotective of Logan at the moment," said the first lady. "I'm sure you understand."

"Absolutely," Michael said. "I wasn't thrilled about sending Maddie out into the big bad world this soon either. And now I might be pulling her right back out; I've just spoken to the president and he suggested it might be a good idea to take precautions a while longer." He clapped Logan on the shoulder. "So we'll just have to come up with another way for you to get to see her. Maybe you could come over to my house sometime and play video games or whatever it is that kids do these days."

"Could I come over today?"

Michael raised an eyebrow at the first lady, who nodded. "Sure, why not. It'll do you both some good." He raised his good arm and waved to Charlie, who had been standing at a discreet distance. "I'm going to take Rascal to my place to visit Maddie," he said. "Can you send a security detail on ahead to clear it?"

Charlie nodded. "I'll dispatch them immediately."

"Thanks. Rascal and I will follow in ten minutes." As Charlie left, Michael turned to the kid. "I just need to check in with my boss and then we can leave. If there's anything you want to bring with you—games or whatever—that should give you time to grab it." He scratched his head. "I don't know what we'll have for dinner. Probably something out of the microwave."

"I don't mind," Logan said. "I'll meet you on the stairs in ten."

Michael nodded and watched him run off along the colonnade.

"I'm glad he has a friend like Maddie in his life," the first lady said. "As much as I wish for your sake that she hadn't had to be there with him, I think having a shared experience like that will be easier for them to get over than either of them would on their own."

"I hope you're right," Michael said. "How are you holding up?"

"I think it's easier for me than for any of the rest of you," she said. 'I didn't have any of the fear in the midst of it that the children had to deal with—and perhaps you as well; I don't want to assume." Michael shrugged. To tell the truth, he hadn't had the time to feel any emotion beyond pure adrenaline until at least half an hour after the last shot was fired. "By the time I knew anything had happened, I was waking up in the hospital with my husband by my side and he was telling me everything was all right." She sighed, and ran a hand through her well-coiffed hair. "I'm scared, but then I'm hardly the first first lady to be scared for her family's safety."

The chief usher passed them with Ms. Harland, escorting her back from her appointment with the president.

"I think that means my husband finally has a few minutes alone," the first lady said. "I should go see if he's doing something that I can interrupt." She patted Michael on his good arm. "I know you'll take good care of my boy," she said. "Go give those kids a fun evening. Do something that can make them forget for a few hours that anybody's ever thought of—of shooting them." She stumbled over her last words, and Michael saw the pain in her eyes at having to think of such a thing happening to her own child.

"I will," he said.

* * *

"Thanks, Walter!" Madeleine Rose Manchester climbed out of the dark SUV that drove her home from school these days. She used to take the bus, but that was before—well, before a lot of stuff. Before the White House had been locked down, before Maddie's dad and Logan and Logan's mom had all ended up in the hospital, before Maddie had been pulled out of school for more than a week because of 'security concerns'.

But everybody was out of the hospital now, and Maddie had been allowed to go back to school, and everything was getting back to normal. Well, as normal as things could ever be anymore, when Maddie had just seen her dad and her best friend get shot in the same day. But everybody said that Logan was almost better, and maybe pretty soon he would be back in school and Maddie could go back to passing notes in math class instead of actually having to pay attention to whatever the teacher was saying about subtracting decimals.

Maddie hefted her backpack higher on her shoulders as she fished the key out of her back pocket. Walter was still idling the SUV in the driveway, just in case some Russian bad guy was lurking in the shrubs of the Manchesters' house in the Bethesda suburbs. Maddie would have laughed at the mental picture that made, but then not very long ago there had been Russian bad guys lurking in the corridors of the White House, so nothing seemed quite as funny anymore.

But no evil gunmen with wolf tattoos sprang out at her as she opened the front door and dumped her backpack on the floor right inside. She poked her head back out the door and gave Walter a thumbs up. He backed the SUV out of the driveway as Maddie slammed the front door and slid the deadbolt over.

Her dad had said he would be home by dinnertime, but that wasn't saying much since he had been known to serve dinner anywhere from five PM to after eight. For now, Maddie knew there were cookies on the kitchen counter. She put three of them on a plate, poured herself a glass of milk, and headed for the living room to watch TV and maybe do a bit of her English homework.

Unfortunately, the living room was where all of the Russian bad guys who hadn't been in the shrubs were lurking.

Maddie blinked a couple of times. Walter was long gone, and she didn't have a weapon or even a panic button. Besides, there were four of them with guns, and only one of her with no gun. Doing her best to act calm and pretend like she hadn't even noticed the weapons, she set the glass of milk on the end table and held out the plate. "You guys want cookies?"

They all made slightly confused faces at her, which gave her a few seconds to scan for tattoos. None of them had any that she could see, neither the wolf eating a bird that the man in the corridor had had nor whatever the Russian version was of a sailor getting "Mother" tattooed somewhere. But she couldn't even see all of their wrists, and after all only one of the three men in the White House had had that tattoo and they'd all been working together. Regardless of their tattoos, what were the odds that two different groups of Russian kidnappers would be lurking in Washington D.C. simultaneously?

To tell the truth, Maddie had no idea what the odds were. Her dad would have known.

One of the bad guys grabbed Maddie's wrist, and she yelped as he yanked it behind her. She wished her dad wasn't still at work, so that he could walk in here and shoot all the bad guys like he'd walked into that corridor in the White House.

But he was still really hurt, so maybe it was better that he wasn't here. If he was here, maybe he wouldn't be fast enough and the bad guys would shoot him too, as well as Maddie. (Maddie hoped they weren't going to shoot her, but whatever they were going to do obviously wasn't very nice and she didn't want them to do it to her dad.)

"So, Maddie said, summoning every bit of bravado from every movie she'd ever seen. After all, she was the good guy in this scenario. "Who are you, and what do you want?"

They all glared at her and didn't say a word. Well, at least three of them glared. Maddie assumed that the bad guy who was behind her holding her arms probably glared like all the rest, but she had no way to know for certain. Unless she asked him, but she didn't think he'd appreciate that. They hadn't even appreciated the cookies, which were now scattered all over the floor. At least she'd thought to set the milk down before he'd grabbed her.

One of the men said something in Russian. They all started to walk down the hallway towards the back of the house—dragging Maddie with them—so Maddie figured he must be the leader. Maybe they were headed for the door to the backyard, or maybe a window. She kind of hoped that was the way they'd come in, too; if they hadn't come in through the front door then there was no reason for Maddie to feel bad about her bad guy detecting skills. Besides, even Walter hadn't noticed anything, and that was supposed to be his job, so Maddie really didn't think it was her fault she hadn't they were here (though she wished Walter had).

She wondered when her dad had in mind for dinnertime today. If he was already on his way home from work, maybe there was a chance that he would get here in time, and maybe he would be fast enough to shoot all the bad guys and everything would be okay. And if Maddie stalled the bad guys, maybe he would have even more of a chance. So she yelled "Ow!" as loud as she could and did her best to become dead weight in the guy's arms, throwing herself towards the floor even though it sent a spiky pain along her arm all the way from the wrist he was twisting up to her shoulder. "You're hurting my arm! Ow!"

They set her down on the floor of the hallway and stuffed some fabric in her mouth so she couldn't yell at them anymore, which was annoying, but it took them a couple of minutes to do it (because she kept biting their hands whenever they got close enough), so that was good.

A car door slammed outside. They all froze, and the leader hissed something in Russian. He sounded angry.

Another door slammed, and Maddie could hear men's voices. Were they coming here? It wasn't her dad, she could tell that much, unless he was with the men and just not talking. But why would he bring multiple men home for dinner? On the other hand, it didn't sound like any of their neighbors. So who could it be?

A few murmured instructions from the leader, and then Maddie was being dragged down the hall into her dad's bedroom. One of the men opened the closet door and slipped inside, leaving the door casually ajar. Another went into the bathroom. The last two crawled under her dad's big queen bed and dragged Maddie down there with them, pressing her cheek roughly into the hard wood floor. One of them put a hand over her mouth, to make it even harder to yell than it already was. (Maddie tried anyway, but she was pretty sure she couldn't be heard any further than the edge of the bed. Then the man twisted her wrist really hard, so she stopped.)

She lay there in silence for a while. (It was probably only a few minutes, but it felt like forever.) If she hadn't hated them all so much, she would have been rather impressed by how quiet four big men were managing to be. The only sound she could hear was the breathing of the man who was holding her, and that was because his mouth was right by her ear.

Finally, there were voices in the hallway, and the bedroom door swung open. "Yeah, it's clear," someone said after only four or five seconds. Maddie wondered if he'd even bothered to glance in the closet. He definitely hadn't checked under the bed.

"Clear here too," someone said from further away. From under the bed, Maddie could see the legs of the man who had spoken first. As soon as the other person reported in, he turned and walked away.

"It's always clear," one of them commented as their voices drifted off down the hall. "I mean, Manchester's been vetted more than half the Cabinet put together. His house isn't going to have any security issues."

Right now there were four problematic things in the house (more if you counted the Russians and their weapons separately), and Maddie thought that the security team or whoever they were really ought to be taking this more seriously. She wished she'd spilled the milk. One of the Russians must have picked up the cookies, since the good guys hadn't said anything about finding them on the floor.

The front door closed. The men dragged Maddie out from under the bed (hand still clamped over her mouth, and Maddie was glad that at least she'd managed to give them that much trouble) and towards the window, which one of them slid open. They all had their guns up, and Maddie wondered where the security team was and whether they were going to get shot.

She wondered where her dad was, too. Maybe that was why the team was checking the house, to make sure it was safe for her dad. And now he was going to come in here and he was going to walk into a trap and he wasn't going to be able to move fast enough because he was still hurt, and Maddie wouldn't be able to even warn him because she had a stupid Russian's hand over her mouth.

* * *

Michael leaned back in the backseat of the SUV as Charlie pulled into the driveway of Michael's house. "Has the team reported in yet?" he asked. It still felt strange, not having an earpiece to hear the answer for himself.

"They're still checking the backyard," Charlie said. "Should be done in another minute." He put a hand to his earpiece, his face puzzled. "They're saying Maddie's not home from school yet. But didn't Walter say—"

Michael was already moving, jerking the door open with one hand and unholstering his gun with the other. "Get Rascal out of—" he started to say, but the kid was already out of the vehicle as well, running for the house. "Damn it. Get back here! Charlie, stay with Rascal and get him out of here." Not bothering to close the door, he ran after Logan and put a hand over his mouth. " _Don't_ yell for Maddie," he hissed, feeling certain that that was exactly what the kid most wanted to do. "Get back in the car."

Michael wanted nothing more than to go find Maddie right now and make sure she was okay, but right now he needed to get Logan out of here. Unfortunately, Logan had other ideas. He twisted in Michael's grasp, trying to uncover his mouth. He probably wanted to go look for Maddie just as much as Michael did. If Logan had been almost any other kid, this would have been far more simpler: they both wanted the same thing, so they could just go look for her together.

But as it was, Michael needed to get Logan to safety. His leg ached from running just those few yards, and at the moment he doubted that he would be able to carry Logan back to the vehicle if he couldn't convince him to return there willingly.

Charlie came up alongside them, gun at the ready. "Is there—"

That was when the shooting started on the other side of the house.

* * *

The security team must not have left when they'd shut the front door; they had just gone into the backyard. At least, that was who Maddie assumed was shooting at her kidnappers. The fourth one had only just climbed out of the window when he keeled over, blood spurting from his throat. The other three dived for cover behind the oleander bushes. That meant that the one who was carrying Maddie let go of her, and she immediately took advantage of that to yank off the gag and climb back in the window.

She knew that her dad kept a loaded handgun in his bedside table. He'd taken her to the shooting range a couple of times and walked her through how to use it. "Never put your finger on the trigger unless you want to shoot whatever you're pointing it at," he'd told her. Right now Maddie definitely wanted to shoot them; she just wasn't sure whether she was going to be any good at it.

She could still hear intermittent gunfire outside, and she hoped the security team had the Russians pinned down behind the oleanders, but if she was wrong, they'd be coming after her any second. She threw the drawer open, grabbed the gun, wrapped her hand around the grip and put her finger on the trigger (even though she was currently pointing it at the drawer and wasn't particularly interested in shooting that), used her other hand to chamber a round, spun around and pointed the gun at the window that two of the Russians were already climbing back in through—"Aim for center of mass," her dad had said, "you'll have the best chance at not missing and you'll at least slow them down"—and fired at the closer one.

He jerked and fell to his knees. The other one dove forward. Before Maddie could manage to get the gun pointed at him, he grabbed it by the barrel and twisted it out of her hand. "Ow!" Maddie screamed.

"I don't want to hurt you, little girl," he said in accented English.

"Really? You're hiding it really well," Maddie said. "Ow." He had his arm around her neck, and with his other hand he was holding a gun to her head. Maddie wasn't sure whether it was his own gun or the one he had taken from her.

"I really don't. So be quiet."

But then the door to the bedroom burst open and Maddie couldn't help but yelp, "Daddy!"

"Let her go," her father said in a very very calm voice, even though he looked terribly angry. He was pointing a gun at them, but Maddie didn't think he'd be able to get a clean shot at the Russian with her standing in the way.

"Put the gun down," her captor said. "It's convenient of you to show up because you're who he really wants. Your daughter is just the means to an end." Maddie was offended, because she'd been there too when the first lady was kidnapped. Of course the Russians didn't know that, and besides her dad had done a lot more than she had, but that didn't mean they had the right to overlook her. Annoyed, she stomped on the guy's toe and he pressed the gun harder against her head, moving it down a couple inches. The movement tugged at her hair hard enough to bring tears to Maddie's eyes. She figured that the gunsight or something must have been caught on her hair when he first held it against her head, and she wished he would untangle it.

She wished he would just let her go. "Daddy?"

"Put the gun down _now_ ," the man said. Maddie thought he sounded pretty young and pretty scared, though not half as scared as Maddie was.

"Let Maddie go and I will."

"Daddy, no!" Maddie couldn't believe he would make an offer like that. She shoved back against her captor, wishing she could fight free somehow, but he only tightened his grip on her. Her father watched them silently, and he didn't retract his offer. "Daddy, please don't!"

"I don't want to hurt the girl," the man said. He pulled the gun an inch or two away from Maddie's head, yanking at her hair again in the process. "If you will set your gun down and surrender, I will let her go."

Maddie's father's face was as impassive as she'd ever seen it. (She wondered if that was what he looked like when he was scared.) "Maddie, go to the kitchen and hide there until everyone leaves," he said.

"Daddy—"

"Now, Maddie." Her father raised his gun so it was no longer pointing at the Russian. He dropped the magazine out of it, then pulled the slide back to send the chambered round pinging across the wood floor of the bedroom towards the closet. He tossed the empty gun and the magazine onto the bed as Maddie tried not to cry. "I surrender," he said. "Now let my daughter go."

The man behind Maddie gave her a little shove forward. "Run and hide, little girl," he said.

Maddie had thought that watching her father get shot at the White House was the scariest thing she would ever see him do, but this was worse. "Daddy..."

"It's okay, sweetheart," her father said, his face still scarily impassive. "Go."

Blinking back tears, Maddie went. She walked slowly down the hallway. She tried to think of something—anything—that she could to help her dad and make things better, but if he hadn't been able to think of any better ideas then it wasn't surprising that she hadn't, either.

Behind her, the bedroom door slammed shut. She glanced back just in case her dad had gotten out, but he wasn't there. He was still on the other side with the bad guy and the bad guy's gun. Maddie couldn't believe she'd left him there.

But she kept walking down the hall, because unfortunately, she knew that was what he wanted her to do.

She walked across the living room, where her cookies and milk were sitting neatly on the end table. The sound of gunfire from outside had stopped by now, and she wondered what was happening out there. She looked around the room, and wondered if maybe it would be safer to hide behind the couch. But her dad had told her to go to the kitchen, and she didn't really feel like disobeying him right now.

Then she rounded the corner into the kitchen, and she found out why he'd said that. "Charlie?"

"Sssh!" Charlie was standing next to the kitchen island, gun at the ready. And behind him, sitting on the floor in the corner was—

"Logan?"

"Ssh!" Charlie hissed again.

"What are you doing here?" Maddie whispered.

"Brought Logan over for a visit and the security team didn't do a good enough job," Charlie whispered back. "Where's your dad?"

"He—" Maddie hiccupped back a sob. "He surrendered to one of the Russians so he'd let me go. You have to go help him."

"Help is on the way," Charlie said. "You know I have to protect Rascal."

"I can protect him," Maddie said frantically. Didn't he understand what would happen to her dad if their reinforcements didn't come in time? She pulled open the cabinet under the sink where they kept cleaning supplies and—more importantly, at the moment—odds and ends. "I've got a hatchet, see?" She retrieved the hatchet from the back of the cabinet and held it up triumphantly. "My dad bought it for me so I could help with chopping wood for the fireplace. I started bedazzling it but I never finished it. I was planning to put more rhinestones along the handle, but then I thought it might be too hard to hold on to."

"Maddie," Charlie said quietly but firmly. He was using one of those no-nonsense grown-up voices that people never used when they were going to say something you actually wanted to hear. "If you want to help protect Rascal, you can do that. We're short-handed here and the kitchen isn't as defensible as I'd like." The whole time he was talking, he stayed facing the entrance to the kitchen, only glancing over his shoulder at her once or twice. "But I can't leave Rascal alone, and if I took him with me to go after your father—which would be stupid—it would only put your father in worse danger because then he'd have to protect Rascal instead of focusing on his safety."

Maddie glared at him, even though he was probably right.

"Maddie, are you okay?" Logan whispered. "Did they hurt you?"

Maddie crouched next to him, still holding her hatchet. "I think they sprained my wrist, but it doesn't hurt much. The last guy said he didn't want to hurt me, but then he held a gun to my head and it kept pulling my hair so I'm not sure if he meant it. Are _you_ okay?"

"Yeah," Logan said quietly. "I, um..." He twisted his hands together in his lap. "I may have made things worse for you. When I heard that you were in danger, I ran in here and that's why Charlie and your dad were with me, because they had to keep me safe. If I'd stayed in the car, maybe they would have been able to come after you sooner."

"Charlie would still have had to stay with you no matter what," Maddie said. "And maybe my dad would have gone with you and then he wouldn't have been here to..." She winced. "To trade himself for me."

"He's going to be okay," Logan said.

"We can't know that," Maddie said.

Charlie put a hand to his earpiece and crouched next to the island. "They're headed in," he said. "Keep down."

Maddie got her hatchet ready to throw, just in case. She'd shot a bad guy once, she told herself: she could throw a hatchet at one if that was what it took.

"I don't want you to get hurt," Logan whispered.

Suddenly, the sound of gunfire returned, much louder than before, like a whole bunch of people shooting all at once. Maddie reached over with the hand that wasn't holding the hatchet and found Logan's hand. "We're going to be okay," she said, though she wasn't sure if he could hear her over all the shooting. She wasn't sure if it was true, either.

Then there was an even louder noise and a bright flash of light, and Maddie's vision went white for a couple of seconds. Logan screamed in her ear, and she was pretty sure she screamed too. By the time she could see and hear again (though her ears were still ringing), all the shooting had stopped. "Do you think the good guys won?" Logan asked.

Charlie stood up again, but he didn't relax, so Maddie kept her hatchet ready. She didn't answer Logan because she was too busy straining to hear any hint of what had happened.

"Maddie!" Her father was yelling from the other side of the house, and Maddie jumped up at once. She heard running footsteps, and she kept the hatchet ready to throw just in case there was still a bad guy loose somewhere, but then he yelled again—"Maddie! Are you all right?"—and his voice was obviously closer so Maddie figured it had to be him running towards them.

After a second, he rounded the corner. He'd gotten his gun back; he was holding it ready to fire but as soon as he saw them, he let it fall to his side. "We're okay," Maddie said. Dropping the hatchet, she leaped forward and threw her arms around him. He hugged her back equally tight, though he kept hold of his own weapon—Maddie could feel the side of his gun pressing tight against her side. It didn't hurt nearly as much as the Russian's gun had.

"Rascal, you okay?" Maddie's dad asked over the top of her head.

"Yeah, but I really hope this is the last time this month," Logan said. "This was two times too many."

"You and me both, kid," Maddie's dad said.

* * *

They spent that night in a bunker underneath the White House. Maddie thought they really ought to have spent a little bit more of the White House decorating budget on because it was the ugliest place she had ever been, all concrete walls and exposed pipes. But at least it didn't have any broken windows or bullet holes, unlike her and her dad's house in the no-longer-peaceful suburbs.

"It'll be like a sleepover," said Logan who insisted on spending the night there too. But normal people's sleepovers didn't have nearly as many heavily-armed frowning guards lining the walls. Or parents wiping their eyes whenever they thought Maddie and Logan weren't looking.

Or, thankfully, ten different flavors of ice cream, brought down from the White House kitchens by the chief usher and spread out across some table with a map on it. (Or maybe some normal sleepovers had that, too. Maddie wasn't sure. She'd never actually been to a normal person's sleepover. They probably didn't have the map table, at least.)

"We should probably talk about things," Maddie's dad said with a sigh, carefully easing himself into a chair next to where she was standing at the table.

"I've only tried eight flavors so far," Maddie said, because that was easier than thinking about what had happened earlier. "Do you think I should try butter pecan next?"

Her dad sighed. "I've never liked butter pecan, personally." He put an arm around her waist and pulled her close. "There's some things I need to tell you about what's been going on." He nodded to one of the guards by the door, and everybody filed out into the next room of the bunker, leaving Maddie and her dad alone with ten slowly melting tubs of ice cream.

"So do we know who those guys were?" Maddie asked after a minute, when her dad still hadn't said anything.

"There is a powerful Russian man who is known as the Wolf," her dad said.

"Like on the man's tattoo at the White House. Did any of these men have tattoos?"

"You're right. And none of them did, but that's because the men today only work for the Wolf. The man with the tattoo was the Wolf's son."

"That doesn't sound good," Maddie said.

"No. We can imagine that the Wolf was extremely angry at his son's death." Her dad rubbed a spot on his bad leg. Maddie wasn't sure whether he was doing it because it hurt or just because he wanted a distraction. "And he doesn't mind hurting a lot of people to make himself feel better."

Maddie winced. She wished she'd eaten less ice cream; it was beginning to curdle in her stomach. She had hoped that since all three of the men who had attacked the first lady were dead, that that would be an end of things. But instead, it sounded like things were only going to get worse. "Does he want revenge on you? Is that why they came to our house?"

"Revenge on me, and possibly the president's family as well," her dad said. "We don't have nearly enough information yet." He took her ice cream bowl away from her, set it on the table, and pulled Maddie up to sit in his lap.

She balanced precariously on his good leg and thought about how only a few days ago she would have thought she was far too mature and grown up to sit in her dad's lap, but now there was nothing she wanted more. She wrapped her arms around his neck and tried really hard to cry. "What are we going to do?"

Her dad patted her shoulder. "So there's something I've been thinking about since the incident at the White House. You have a lot of time to think, lying in a hospital bed with nothing to stare at except for white walls and bad TV."

"What were you thinking about?"

"Alaska. It's big, it's as middle of nowhere as it gets, and I could put my pilot's license to use again. There aren't a lot of roads, so everybody flies everywhere."

"You want to go to Alaska? Why? If people want to kill us, isn't that a really bad time to go on a vacation?"

"Not for a vacation, Mad Dog," he said. "To live. For a while. Until the feds track the Wolf down and can assure us he's been neutralized. What do you think?"

"And leave Logan?"

Her dad patted her hair. "It'll be tough, kiddo. But I know Rascal wants you to be safe, just like you want him to be safe. And I think Alaska's one of the safest places for us right now. I can't promise that things will be easy, and I can't promise that you'll like it there. But I know I'll breathe easier getting you out of D.C. We'll announce that I've resigned my position and I think it might be best if we claim that you were killed in the attempted kidnapping today. Maybe then the Wolf won't try to come after us. And if he does, he won't be able to find us. We'll make sure of that."

"Okay," Maddie said. She lifted her head from her dad's shoulder and looked around the room, with its computer screens and its White House emblems and its melty ice cream. She wondered if this was the last time she was going to see all those things. "Sometimes running and hiding is the right thing to do, right? Even though we're the good guys and even though in your job you're always supposed to run towards danger?"

Her dad nodded. "Sometimes a strategic retreat is what's best. And besides, I'm only supposed to run towards danger when one of the people I'm assigned to protect is in danger. But now, if anything, my presence might put them in more danger. So you could say that—as much as I don't want to take you away from your best friend—the best thing I can do to protect the first family right now is to go away. And fortunately, that's also the best thing I can do to protect you."

"Okay," Maddie said again. The way her dad described it, she figured it sounded like their best move. Maybe their only move. And having her dad include her in the decision made her feel kind of grown up. "So we'll move to Alaska. It'll be like an adventure."

"Exactly like an adventure," her dad said. Maddie was pretty sure the smile he was smiling wasn't genuine, but it was still better than when he'd been getting all weepy earlier. "You're going to love it."


End file.
